ASSAULTS AND MURDERS IN RAILWAY CARRIAGES. A small leather bag, a stick, and a hat were found in the compartment. At about the time that this discovery was made, the driver and stoker of an engine which had been working the trains of the HackneyWick and Stratford line, found a man lying on the space between the two lines of rail at a spot close to Hackney-Wick, the station before Hackney. The person so discovered was still living, but was covered with blood, and had evidently received severe blows on the head with some blunt instrument; his watch and chain were gone, the latter having been broken off close to the link which attached it to the button-hole of the waistcoat; but money and a silver snuff-box were found in his pockets. He only survived a few minutes after being removed to a neighbouring tavern, and had not regained consciousness before his death. The body was soon identified by friends and relatives, and it was found that a pair of gold eye-glasses which the deceased had worn were missing; but his diamond ring was still on his finger. The little leather bag had apparently been opened by some one after the assault, which probably took place between the stations of Bow and Hackney-Wick; it appeared that the body had been dragged to the door of the railway-carriage and thrown out; and that the murderer had escaped while the train was in motion. It was at first supposed that there must have been some other motive than robbery for the attack, which might, it was thought, have been made suddenly, while the deceased was dozing, and therefore only half conscious. Still the short time occupied in the journey between the stations might have accounted for the trivial nature of the robbery achieved by such horrible means, and there was no suspicion of any one who was likely to make such an attack for revenge. No clue was to be obtained, and the government, Messrs. Robarts, and the gentleman's family, offered respectively £100, making altogether £300 reward for the discovery of the murderer. Only one starting-point was afforded to the police. No hat was found near the body of the murdered man, and the hat which was found in the railway-carriage was known not to belong to him. For a week no information 189 was obtained which seemed likely to lead to a discovery of the perpetrator of the crime. Then link by link of evidence fixed the guilt upon a German named Franz Müller. The watch-chain taken from the murdered man, had been taken to a jeweller in Cheapside named Death, who had exchanged it for another, and the person who had left it had the appearance of a foreigner. Then a cabman came forward to examine the hat found in the railway-carriage, and declared it to be one which he had bought for an acquaintance of his, a native of Cologne, who once lodged in his house, and was, or had been, courting his sister. A photograph which Müller had given to the sister was identified by Mr. Death as a likeness of the person who had exchanged the chain; and to complete this part of the evidence, Müller had given to one of the cabman's children a card-board box, such as jewellers use, with the name of Mr. Death upon it. Before this, shortly after the murder, Müller was at the cabman's house wearing a gold chain such as he had not previously possessed, and it was remembered that it resembled that said to have belonged to the murdered man. On the police going to Müller's lodgings at Old Ford, Bow, it was found that he had been there about eleven o'clock on the night of the murder, and was in a very confused or agitated state. When at the cabman's he had seemed to walk lame, and explained it by saying he had sprained his ankle. He could not be found at his lodgings, and, from a letter posted at Worthing, it was discovered that he had sailed for New York in a ship named the Victoria. Two detective officers, accompanied by Mr. Death and the cabman, started in pursuit, in a steamer, which, it was calculated, would reach New York four days before the arrival of the Victoria. This turned out to be the case, and Müller was arrested. The circumstantial evidence was complete, and was confirmed by the fact that the hat of the murdered man was in Müller's possession, and had been cut down or reduced in height and altered, so that he could wear it. Müller was tried, sentenced to death, and executed. Two results followed the crime, and the apprehension and exccution of the criminal. First, the detective police, who had for a long time been falling into disrepute because of several crimes, and two or three murders, the perpetrators of which had not been discovered, obtained some renewal of credit for having helped to put together the very easy and obvious items of evidence; secondly, a great outcry was heard, demanding that some improvement should be made in railway compartments, that means of communication with the guard and with other passengers should be provided to every compartment, so that an alarm might readily be given in case of assault or danger. Some improvements were tried in the way of experiments on means of communication, and in some instances it was made possible to convey an alarm to passengers in another compartment through small openings or glass partitions in the upper part of the carriage above the seats. What did not happen was that really effectual measures were taken either to communicate with the guard or to give an immediate alarm, or to ensure the stopping of the train under pressure of any great emergency. The carriages of most of the railways having been built on a regular plan which enables passengers to secure a certain degree of privacy, the companies were not inclined to incur the expense of a change of construction. Several serious and savage assaults, and certainly one brutal murder like that perpetrated by Müller, have occurred since, and yet little or no important change has been effected for the security of passengers against robbery and violence in the carriages of many of our lines of railway. It will be seen that the instances here given of crimes which called for public attention are such as point to the necessity for progressive legislation. Unhappily there were also many offences committed during the period now under review which served to contradict the assumption that social progress had been very marked, or had extended very far; but making allowance for the vastly greater publicity given to all classes of offences against the law, it must be admitted that there had been a considerable diminution in crimes of brutal violence, taking into account the returns from all parts of the country. At the same time there were far too many evidences of a want of commercial morality. Several fraudulent schemes were discovered only through the loss or ruin which they had wrought, and more than one large financial concern was already trembling on the verge of insolvency, and was yet carrying on operations which those who were directing them should have known could end only in widely spread calamity. Many large undertakings had been carried on by risky speculation, and those who were responsible had become desperate gamesters, wildly fancying that fortune might yet be retrieved by some lucky throw of the die. The conduct of Governor Eyre, the execu tion of George William Gordon, and the whole story of the riots in Jamaica formed an exciting episode in the history of the years 1865 and 1866. Public opinion had scarcely been so completely divided, public feeling had probably not run so high, since the outbreak of the war in America, as it did on the question of the treatment of the negroes and the summary execution of the alleged ringleaders of the disturbances in Jamaica in 1865. The origin of these riots, which were said to have been intended as the beginning of a complete insurrection, was by no means easy to discover. The first serious disturbance took place in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East, Morant Bay, and nearly all the accounts agree in representing that it was attended with horrible atrocities committed by the negroes. There can be no doubt that the outbreak was a very serious one: the negroes, who were suffering greatly from want of remunerative employment, had been aroused by seditious speeches and printed notices calling on them to band together against the whites. Their necessities were attributed to the heavy taxation imposed on them, and to the increase of import duties, which raised the prices of food and clothing. There had been a drought in the island for two seasons, and some districts were in so impoverished a state that there was no employment for the labourers on plantations which yielded a bare maintenance for their owners. Meanwhile the horses, donkeys, and carts of the small proprietors were THE JAMAICA RIOTS-GOVERNOR EYRE. taxed, and the import duties were increased, or at all events maintained at a high rate, on nearly all necessary articles of consumption. The negroes who had to live by cultivating their own small patches of land were many of them half starved and half clad, and the labourers were in great distress. Two or three years before it had been represented that there was not sufficient labour on the island to cultivate the plantations, and a system of immigration had been commenced. Labourers were brought from India and from China, and in this scheme £400,000 had been expended out of the taxes. Here were smouldering elements of discontent which might soon be fanned into a flame of insurrection; and though it had been declared, on the other hand, that the idleness of the emancipated negroes was the chief cause of their own poverty and of the unsatisfactory condition of affairs in general, such an explanation required a good deal of proof before it was likely to meet with general acceptance in this country. In fact the old battle of opinions about the character and claims of the negro, and the necessity for keeping him in subjection, began over again and with additional emphasis derived from the struggle which had led to the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern States of America. It can scarcely be denied that most of those who had had personal acquaintance with the negro himself, either in the plantations or in those places where he had found employment among other labourers in large towns, declared that he would never, as a rule, be a profitable member of any community unless he worked under the control of a master. That among the surviving characteristics of his race was indisposition to work except under the pressure of immediate necessity. That he would never, if left to himself, do more work than would suffice to earn his daily ration of common food and such scanty attire as might be necessary to enable him to appear among civilized beings. At best he was a clumsy, laughing, careless, grotesque, grown-up child, over whom it was sometimes necessary to exercise severe control. At worst, along with the incurable idleness, or the very fitful industry, which was a heritage of the savagery from which he sprang, 191 there existed a latent unreasoning passion which might be roused to ferocity whenever he fancied he had some cause for revenge or reprisal. Such are the opinions held to-day by numbers of persons in the South, even in the towns where free negroes have been among the lower class of labourers and domestics ever since the close of the American war. Nor is it by any means certain that the condition of "coloured persons" in the North is not regulated by the survival of a similar impression among those who were, and are still, the unflinching advocates of equal personal and political liberty for black and white alike. The negroes in Jamaica, and especially about Morant Bay district, had evidently an organization which enabled them to make a formidable display of force. They had for some time held meetings under leaders who were at all events capable of arousing them to rebellion. Their grievances were such as demanded redress, and the conditions which caused them had been set forth in a letter addressed to Mr. Cardwell, the colonial secretary, by Dr. Underhill, a gentleman who was associated with the Baptist mission. This letter, which was on the whole a temperate statement, plainly referred to the want of just government in Jamaica; to the unjust taxation of the coloured population; to the refusal of just tribunals; to the denial of political rights to the emancipated negroes; to the want of remunerative employment, which would in time remedy the evils complained of by increasing the strength and intelligence of the people. It was forwarded by Mr. Cardwell to Governor Eyre, who, it was afterwards asserted, published it in the local newspapers, where it appeared with an invitation to the residents of Jamaica to furnish information on which to found an answer to it. It was this letter, and the meetings called in consequence of it, that Mr. Eyre regarded as among the chief causes of the rebellion; but it was to George William Gordon, a man of colour, a Baptist preacher, and a member of the assembly at Kingston, and to a negro named Paul Bogle, who was a leader at some of the seditious meetings, that he attributed active mischief. There seemed to have been preparations for a general insurrection which was to extend to Kingston and other places beside Morant Bay; but the arrest, for some trifling offence,—of a negro who, perhaps, was one of the more active agents in the latter place, led to an attempt to rescue him, in which the court-house was attacked, and a serious riot was the consequence. It was on the 7th of October, 1865, and the official report of it stated that about 150 men, armed with sticks, went that day (Saturday) to Morant Bay with the avowed purpose of rescuing a person who was to be tried there for some trifling offence. The apprehension of one of their number for disorderly conduct in the court-house led to great fighting and confusion, and compelled the custos of the district, Baron von Ketelholdt, to issue warrants for the apprehension of twenty-eight of the more prominent of the rioters. On endeavouring to take one Paul Bogle into custody he was surrounded and protected by a large company of armed blacks, who seized the policemen and compelled them to take an oath that they would act against the government. On the 11th an encounter took place in the square of the court-house, the rioters overpowering the few volunteers present, and setting fire to the building. They then commenced a wild murderous onslaught on the white people, killing and mutilating in the most shocking manner all whom they came across, and even extending the area of their excesses to the plantations bordering on Morant Bay. This seemed to have precipitated the proposed insurrection. Some steps were taken to quell the rioters and punish the ringleaders, and it is very likely, from what afterwards transpired, that the negroes had little hope of consideration. "Skin for skin," wrote Paul Bogle; "the iron bars is now broken in this parish; the white people send a proclamation to the governor to make war against us, which we all must put our shoulders to the wheels and pull together. The Maroons sent the proclamation to meet them at Hayfield at once without delay that they will put us in a way how to act. Every one of you must leave your house; take your guns. Who don't have guns, take your cutlasses down at once. Come over to Stony Gut that we might march over to meet the Maroons at once without delay. Blow your shells! Roll your drums; house to house take out every man. March them down to Stony Gut. Any that you find, take them in the way; take them down with their arms. War is at us, my black skins! War is at hand from to-day till to-morrow. Every black man must turn at once, for the oppression is too great. The white people are now cleaning up their guns for us, which we must prepare to meet them too. Chear, men, chear, in heart we looking for you a part of the night or before daybreak.” In considering the course pursued by Governor Eyre it must be remembered that there was already an insurrection in Hayti, in the suppression of which an English vessel had been engaged; that Governor Eyre had only a small force at his disposal and only one vessel of any importance, the Wolverine; and that he was necessarily obliged to leave much power in the hands of the military officers. A number of Maroons, who had before served in a military capacity, came down from Mooretown, and were now armed and placed under their former captain, the Hon. A. G. Fyfe, with whom they acted loyally in helping to suppress the rebellion, but probably with about as much cruelty as the rebels had shown to the whites. When the news of the rebellion reached Governor Eyre at Spanish Town he caused a body of troops to be sent by sea to Morant Bay, and issued a proclamation declaring that martial law prevailed throughout the entire county of Surrey, except in the city of Kingston. He proceeded to Morant Bay himself in the Cornwall, and saw the commanding officers mete out summary justice to the persons concerned most prominently in the revolt. Short trials, followed in most instances by shooting or hanging, went on for many days in succession. Five tried on board the Wolverine were hanged on the stone archway of the burnt court-house, where the worst of the massacres had taken place. Concerning his journey the governor wrote: "I found everywhere the most un EXCESSES OF PUNISHMENT-EXECUTION OF GORDON. mistakable evidence that George William Gordon, a coloured member of the House of Assembly, had not only been mixed up in the matter, but was himself, through his own misrepresentation and seditious language addressed to the ignorant black people, the chief cause and origin of the whole rebellion. Mr. Gordon was now in Kingston, and it became necessary to decide what action should be taken with regard to him. Having obtained a deposition on oath that certain seditious printed notices had been sent through the post-office directed in his handwriting to the parties who had been leaders in the rebellion, I at once called upon the custos to issue a warrant and capture him. For some little time he managed to evade capture; but finding that sooner or later it was inevitable, he proceeded to the house of General O'Connor and there gave himself up. I at once had him placed on board the Wolverine for safe custody and conveyance to Morant Bay." Gordon was tried by court-martial there, and hanged on the morning of the 23d. "I have seen," wrote Governor Eyre," the proceeding of the court, and concur both in the justice of the sentence and the policy of carrying it out." The governor wrote that besides Gordon, the persons prominently concerned in the outbreak were black people of the Baptist persuasion connected with him, political demagogues and agitators; a few Baptist missionaries, and a portion of the press. Humanly speaking, he said he believed that the promptitude and vigour of action which had at once grappled with and punished the rebellion had been the saving of Jamaica. Although the steps taken by Governor Eyre met with the entire approval of the Legislative Council and House of Assembly, it was thought by many persons in this country that he had shown unnecessary haste and severity in his treatment of the rebels. This opinion can scarcely be wondered at when we read the accounts that came here of the wholesale punishment and slaughter. For it should have been remembered that the persons punished were none the less entitled to proper trial and regular sentences properly executed because they were black. They were emancipated or free-born negroes or coloured people, the sub VOL. IV. 193 jects of her majesty the queen, and had therefore a right to the same treatment as would have been accorded to insurgents in the United Kingdom, to rebel Fenians, or riotous "unionists" bent on murder. Writing from Morant Bay Lieutenant Adcock reported to Brigadier-general Nelson the result of his pursuit of the insurgents: "I have the honour to inform you that on the morning of the 23d instant I started with thirty men for Duckinfield, and visited several estates and villages. I burned seven houses in all, but did not even see a rebel. On returning to Golden Grove in the evening sixtyseven prisoners had been sent in by the Maroons. I disposed of as many as possible, but was too tired to continue after dark. On the morning of the 24th I started for Morant Bay, having first flogged four and hung six rebels. I beg to state that I did not meet a single man upon the road up to Keith Hall; there were a few prisoners here, all of whom I flogged, and then proceeded to John's-town and Beckford. At the latter place I burned seven houses and one meeting-house; in the former four houses. We came so suddenly upon these two villages that the rebels had no time to retire with their plunder; nearly 300 rushed down into a gully, but I could not get a single shot, the bushes being so thick. We could all distinctly hear their voices in the wood all round; but after the first rush not a man was to be seen, and to follow them with any advantage was impossible." Captain Ford writes on the same subject:-"We made a raid with thirty men, flogging nine men and burning their negro-houses. We held a courtmartial on the prisoners, who amounted to about fifty or sixty. Several were flogged without court-martial, from a simple examination. . . This is a picture of martial law. The soldiers enjoy it; the inhabitants here dread it. If they run on their approach they are shot dead for running away." The execution of Gordon was regarded with extreme disapproval by large number of people, probably the great majority of people in England. He had denied all complicity with Bogle's insurrectionary plans; he declared that at the trial the evidence he could have 76 |